So at a time when most companies are scrambling for a prime seat on the green bandwagon, why not a company-branded wind farm?

When police bring the traffic to an abrupt halt in Raipur, capital of the remote Indian state of Chhattisgarh, drivers know what to expect next.

Alternate fuel research has been the topic of the highest priority in the context of depletion of fossil fuels at alarming rate and increasing of pollution levels of the engines with conventional fuel

Tata Chemicals, India's leading manufacturer of inorganic chemicals, has firmed up an investment of Rs 750 crore in next three to four years to pursue its foray into ethanol.

Despite their green intentions, buyers of blended biofuel may not be getting quite what they are paying for.

It now delivers electricity, hot water to Japanese homes A prototype of a fuel cell battery for mobile phones, a file picture. Hiratsuka: Masanori Naruse jogs every day, collects miniature cars and feeds birds in his backyard, but he is proudest of the way his home and 2,200 others in Japan get electricity and heat water

A scientist who mapped his genome and the genetic diversity of the oceans said on Thursday that he is creating a life form that feeds on climate-ruining carbon dioxide to produce fuel. Geneticist Craig Venter disclosed his potentially worldchanging "fourth-generation fuel' project at an elite Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, California. "We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry and becoming a major source of energy,' Venter told an audience that included global warming fighter Al Gore and Google co-founder Larry Page. "We think we will have fourth-generation fuels in about 18 months, with CO2 as the fuel stock.' Simple organisms can be genetically re-engineered to produce vaccines or octane-based fuels as waste, according to Venter. Biofuel alternatives to oil are third-generation. The next step is life forms that feed on CO2 and give off fuel such as methane gas as waste, according to Venter. "We have 20 million genes which I call the design components of the future,' Venter said. "We are limited here only by our imagination.' His team is using synthetic chromosomes to modify organisms that already exist, not making new life, he said. Organisms already exist that produce octane, but not in amounts needed to be a fuel supply. "If they could produce things on the scale we need, this would be a methane planet,' Venter said. "The scale is what is critical; which is why we need to genetically design them.' The genetics of octane-producing organisms can be tinkered with to increase the amount of CO2 they eat and octane they excrete, according to Venter. The limiting part of the equation isn't designing an organism, it's the difficulty of extracting high concentrations of CO2 from the air to feed the organisms, the scientist said in answer to a question from Page. Scientists put "suicide genes' into their living creations so that if they escape the lab, they can be triggered to kill themselves. Venter said he is also working on organisms that make vaccines for the flu and other illnesses. "We will see an exponential change in the pace of the sophistication of organisms and what they can do,' Venter said. "We are a ways away from designing people. Our goal is just to make sure they survive long enough to do that.' But, if two scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States are correct, people will still be on gasoline even 50 years from now, churning out climate changing pollutants in the process, and yet not be accelerating an ecological disaster. With crude at nearly $100 a barrel

Most prior studies have found that substituting biofuels for gasoline will reduce greenhouse gases because biofuels sequester carbon through the growth of the feedstock. These analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain diverted to biofuels.

Increasing energy use, climate change and carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels make switching to low-carbon fuels a high priority. Biofuels are a potential low-carbon energy source, but whether biofuels offer carbon savings depends on how they are produced.

BP is looking for ways to realise the value of its alternative energy investments, which the oil and gas group believes are worth up to $7bn (

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